


He Used To Be Mine

by HailForTheQueen



Series: Why Does Nobody Want Me? [2]
Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Gen, Healing, Past Child Abuse, Recovery, Relapse, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24523747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HailForTheQueen/pseuds/HailForTheQueen
Summary: "Your loss would be felt everyday, David. It would be a pain of which a remedy could never be found. Take the love I've given you since I first met you, let it wash over you and soothe you; let me take your pain and make it something manageable," Campbell pleads over the phone, his foot subconsciously pressing harder on the gas as he hears the static-filled cries of his adopted son.
Relationships: Cameron Campbell & David (Camp Camp), David & Max (Camp Camp), David/Gwen (Camp Camp)
Series: Why Does Nobody Want Me? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1367233
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44





	He Used To Be Mine

**Author's Note:**

> And she's back with another depressing story :0  
> Now this one is the main story in my series 'Why Does Nobody Want Me'  
> It tells the tale of how David had been abused throughout his childhood, how he'd come into the care of one Mr Campbell, and how he'd broken down to a state in which he felt he only had one option left.  
> No pairings, just friendships and father/son relationship with Campbell and David! I'll tell you now, there will be no character death, and there will be a happy ending (after a shit load of angst of course) so stay tuned!  
> (Title taken from 'She Used To Be Mine' by Sara Bareilles from Waitress)
> 
> This is set 6 years after the first Camp Camp episode, Max is now 16 and David is 24 (He was 18 when he first started working full time at Camp Camp). Also, the layout of the counsellor's cabin is a shared main room, with separate bedrooms and a shared bathroom!

David walks into the cabin at 7 am on the dot. His hands are shaking gently, barely supressed tremors rattling through his body as he pulls the handle down and gently pushes the door open. He repeats the action when closing it; it makes less noise this way. Not that it particularly matters with the way Gwen sleeps. She lays in her small, separate room, dead to the world, even as David slowly trudges to their shared bathroom, subconsciously holding his breath in his effort to remain undetected.

Once he's found his way to the isolated room, he lets out a deep breath. He slumps back against the door in his exhaustion, his eyes fluttering closed in a fight to rest for the little time they can before he's pushing himself again. He takes a moment to acknowledge his distinct variety of fatigue; a debilitating breed of lethargy he's been fighting behind closed smiles for the majority of his life. It takes shuddering breaths as he inhales, draining the energy from him, feeding on his oxygen to keep itself alive. It's a life in and of itself, a heavy sentience that's settled into his bones and burrowed a home in his gaping emptiness. Sometimes he feels as though he's on borrowed time, waiting for the inevitable death that comes with being swallowed by his own darkness.

He doesn't look in the mirror as he retrieves the pill bottle from his pocket. He unscrews the cap and shuffles two small, pale pills into the palm of his hand. For a moment, he feels hysteria rise in his throat at the fact that these two tiny, unassuming pills are the only thing keeping him semi-sane. The longer he stares, the more intense the frenzy of silent panic becomes, bubbling and building, boiling and bellowing.

He swallows it down with the medication before he can dwell on it too much.

And still he does not face his reflection. He strips off the uniform he hadn't bothered to change out of in the night, and leaves it in a crumpled pile on the floor, stepping into the shower. He doesn't shy away from the spray as he turns it on, shivering in both the initial cold and the eventual searing hot stream of water. He half-heartedly scrubs at his skin, not even blinking as he steps out and towel dries his red, raw skin.

He wraps the towel around his waist and sets to brushing his teeth and washing his face. It's only as he lifts his gaze from the sink to towel off his face that he spares a glance forward.

He's confronted with his faded-out reflection. Even after washing up he feels that he looks dead; a grey tint to his tanned skin, a faint purplish hue under his eyes, lips naturally resting downwards in an honest frown. Nothing that someone would notice if they weren't specifically looking for it. He humours himself into thinking that perhaps it's just the time of day causing his subtly dishevelled countenance. Perhaps it's the hard glare of the light. Perhaps it's his loneliness.

Because he has to admit he _is_ lonely. Because as much as he can fool everyone with his smiles and moral lessons, he cannot fool himself.

Over the past few weeks, he admits he's been fighting. He admits the natural joy accompanied by nature and his campers is fading when it shouldn't be. Camping is one of the few things that had first helped to bring him out of his depression and now it's failing, his medication is failing, he's failing. He's falling. Fallen short of his true calling. 

From here he can't hear the chirp of wild birds, awake and singing and cheerful and free. He can only hear his stuttering heartbeat, can only feel the thick steam swirling and whirling and suffocating him. It's this atmosphere that he allows himself to break down in.

His gasp breaks off into a muffled sob as he clamps a hand over his mouth and sinks to the floor. Because in this moment, he truly feels like he's drowning with nobody to offer a helping hand. The campers are only children after all, and the Quartermaster is the _Quartermaster._ Even Gwen has said countless times that they're not _real friends._ They're "co-workers with the shittiest job the world can offer." They're not friends when she's smashing a guitar over his head. They're not friends when she's insulting and belittling him. They're not friends when she does her best to ignore him, even when they're alone in their shared cabin.

His breath hitches and he can't help but let out a quiet whimper, clutching at the bathtub even as he curls into himself. He can't find the air in his lungs to properly breathe, and can't quite find it in himself to care. Hot, salty tears spill down his cheeks and drip from his chin before he can wipe at them. The muscles in his chin tremble gentle with the force of his anguish, and he can all but look to the steamed tiles to seek out some comfort in the fact that this is reality. The static in his head buzzes and cancels out his own small, distressed sounds as he shifts to cling to himself.

He stays like this for some time until his tears have stopped and he can calm his breathing. It takes something out of him each time, wearing him down to his frayed and exposed nerves, to a point where he is forced to acknowledge that no, he cannot do this forever. He may not even be able to last the summer.

 _I'll manage,_ He thinks to himself as he stands on shaky legs, pulling his towel closer around himself. He rinses his face once more with cold water before he turns to leave. _For the kids._

 _But they're not kids anymore._ Another voice whispers. He promptly pushes the thought aside.

* * *

It's about 7:30 by the time he emerges from the cabin in a fresh uniform. With nothing to do but wonder, he decides to make breakfast for everyone, a habit he had newly picked up this year. As he walks into the Mess Hall, a cloud of confusion hovers about him when he notices the Quartermaster isn't in the kitchen starting breakfast as he usually is before David interrupts him with offers to help.

He shuffles around to the door separating the hall and kitchen and creeps over to the counter once he spies a sheet of paper with messy handwriting scrawled across it, peering down at in curiosity.

_David,_

_Since you always insist on making breakfast and sending me to have some "down time" before the campers wake, I didn't bother showing up. The duty rests with you now._

_-Quartermaster_

In the silence of the isolated building, he tries for a smile, wills it to come naturally. The note is funny enough, though the upturn of his lips is strained and painful, the muscles twitching back down into a frown. It's harder to smile when he's alone, finds he's the one and only person he can never quite manage to fool.

Maybe Max too, but David refuses to so much as entertain the possibility that the teenager's own cynical outlook on life is enough to let him see through the façade, at least partly.

His mood settles around him throughout the day, a blanket that both smothers and comforts him, creating an illusion reminiscent of dissociation. And yet still David powers through.

If this was 6 years ago, Max would have made it his god-given mission to taunt David with vicious insults until he broke down which they both knew would work with Max already sensing the counsellors declining mood. But somewhere between his third and fourth summer at Camp Campbell, the kid had mellowed out somewhat, still with a slight pessimistic attitude, yet no longer trying to make hell of other people's life as a way of coping with his own emotions. As David had learned by the end of that second summer, his mum had finally left his deadbeat dad and moved them far from his abusive clutch. He even saw Nikki and Neil around their city now, yet all of their parents still insisted on sending them to the summer camp as a reprieve from the sometimes overwhelming urban atmosphere. Nikki was always eager, so neither of the boys could ever really bring themselves to protest too much--after all, they did spend all of their other breaks together in the city.

With Max now being 16, there's still his air of maturity, more fitting to him now than when he was only 10. Instead of tormenting the counsellor upon discovering his less than enthusiastic mood, he simply sits now in front of him at dinner in the Mess Hall, slamming his tray down with a dull thud.

"So," He starts, piercing turquoise eyes narrowing on David. "What's wrong with _you_?"

David chuckles nervously under the camper's unrelenting analysis, giving him a light-hearted smile as he looks up from his own untouched tray. "How could anything be wrong on such a lively night?" He replies softly, with enough heartfelt bullshit that any other camper would never believe David was feeling anything less than his usual self.

"I don't know," Max says indifferently. "You tell me."

And there's David's nervous laughter again, except this time he can't bring himself to say anything to dismiss Max's claims. He just looks to the side and hides his small frown by resting the left side of his face in his palm.

Max doesn't push. He looks to the side where Nikki is pulling ridiculous kissy faces at him and Neil is struggling to contain his laughter at Max's ensuing expression. He scoffs at David, stands and saunters over to his usual table where Dolph has once again tried to take his place.

* * *

By 10 p.m. all of the campers are safely tucked away in their tents, even Gwen is fast asleep by the time David gets back from his rounds, trash TV still playing quietly in the background and illuminating their shared living room. The door to her small, separate bedroom is slightly open, perhaps from where she'd tiredly pushed at it in her half-asleep stumble to her bed. David chuckles humourlessly as he switches off the TV and gently closes her door before pushing open his own.

For a while he simply sits on his bed. He considers strumming softly on his guitar, even gets as far as picking the instrument up and plucking at a few chords. But there's no music in him tonight. Only numbness thickly veiling an ocean of pain below the surface.

He knows he has medication for his sleepless nights, knows just how effective the pills are, but even they can't fight off the nightmares when they invade thick and heavy, and hang about him for the following day like a suffocating fog.

His fingers twitch where he's clutching at the blankets, desperate to relieve the abundance of nervous energy bubbling in every one of his muscles. He grabs the duvet off of his bed along with a pillow as he quietly gets up and slips into the coolness of the night.

He goes to the same spot he finds himself in every night these past few weeks, a small clearing with a dark canopy hanging overhead.

He feels a sick sense of peace as he rests in the small clearing and gazes at the light-speckled darkness of the night. As though he would be more content to stay in the nothingness of the sky than live through another day.

And that's when the tiredness makes itself known again, a thick pea stupor taking over his mind.

It's overwhelming enough that he misses the soft crunch of fallen branches underfoot as a curious camper peers from behind a tree, having followed David from the camp. Max had only awoken from his urge to use the toilet, much like many of the campers do throughout the night. Only, he happened to be walking back to his tent at the same moment a sullen David had been creeping out of his own accommodation. The only natural thing to do was to track him for any suspicious nightly charades.

Only, David just sits there and thinks of how wrong his life is: how wrong it is that he can't help falling apart every night; how wrong it is that there's not a single ghost out there to help him; how wrong it is that he can't get better.

With the thoughts come a swell of emotion as though his unspoken words had burst a thinly made dam.

There are tears already leaking from the corners of his eyes by the time he realises he's crying. He takes a deep, shuddering breath only to release a gutteral groan as he breaks down.

He cries like his spirit needs to break loose through his tears and evaporate into the night's atmosphere.

His mouth falls slack as he unleashes a silent scream with enough emotion to make the ghost of pain kiss at his throat, a hard lump forming that he doesn't even try to swallow down. He cries with a ferocity unlike anything Max has ever seen, guttural cries that ignite something primal in people. He watches the way David curls into himself, desperately clutching--at the blankets, at himself--in a subconscious attempt to ground himself.

His strength dissolves and his choked sobs is all he can do to not entirely destroy himself in his flurry of anguish, every muscle in his face twitching and groaning at the strain of his cries.

He slumps forward onto hands and knees, fighting for quick cut-off breaths as he feels himself drown in the pain, every atom of his being screaming in unison, traumatised by having to exist. The sobs never slow or falter as they wrack through his body, only interrupted by his painful sounding breaths that fuel the tears.

Abuse changes people, makes them forget who they were before it happened, but David never had the chance to develop into a person before it started.

All he knew was pain.

All he knows is pain.

Pain enough to pull him apart; pain enough to break him.

Max feels tears well in his own eyes at the scene before him, has to swallow down his own emotions he can feel burning and lodged in his throat. Some primal instinct responds to David's hoarse cries, fuels him with empathy and sympathy and the need to help. Something stronger, some icy integral shard makes him take a step back, turn his back and quietly slink away. He spares the redhead a last glance, guilt twisting in his stomach like a punishment at having left the man alone in such a broken and vulnerable state. Yet he doesn't go back, and instead slips back into the darkness of his tent, where Neil lays sleeping, oblivious to his nightly excursions.

It's a while before David can bring himself to stop crying, the sobs only dying down when sheer exhaustion tells him that he has nothing left to cry, that there's nothing left to him now. His eyes are red and puffy, closing of their own volition. He takes no comfort in the respite, not when he can still feel his entire body violently shaking, and the mess of tears drying on his face. The pain had come slowly, then all at once, and left in the same way, leaving David void of any emotion.

The numbness settles over him like a blanket, and only then, at 3:37 am, does he feel himself slip away into a restless sleep.

He wakes not three hours later, just before 6 am. Sitting up slowly, he sheds the heavy weight of his blankets off of his body, and revels in the cool breeze of the morning air, grounding him in reality. The slight contentment won't last, so he makes the most of it by slowly making his way down to the pier to gaze into the swirling depths of the lake, a life in and of itself. Something about the soft ripples of the waves put him at ease, and his finds himself staring into it for almost an hour before he glances down at his watch.

6:54 am.

He sighs softly as he stands from his position on the pier.

Trudging lightly through the fallen leaves and twigs, he makes his way back to his room. He can feel hot prickles of agony building under the surface of his skin, and instinctively knows he will shed more tears before he faces anyone today. He tries for a shaky smile to reassure himself as he gently pulls down the cabin's door handle.

David walks into the cabin at 7 am on the dot.


End file.
